Conventionally, when a user searches for a topic using a search engine on a computing device, the user's personal, relevant information is not taken into account in the search. The search engine receives as input the user's search terms only with the exception of the user's geographic location in some of the newer search engine algorithms. While the geographic location permits the search engine to return more relevant information in the results, there are other relevant data items that could be utilized to allow the search engine to return vastly more relevant search results and organize, prioritize and deliver the results in an increasingly optimized manner.
When searching the Internet, users have different choices as to which web search engine to utilize. This set of different engine options was not always available. The web's first primitive search engine, release on Sep. 2, 1993 was named ‘W3Catalog’, and was a series of Perl scripts that periodically mirrored pages and rewrote them into a standard format. While unrefined in its ability to return search results, this first search engine served as the beginning of what would later be known as “web searching”. Another search engine WEBCRAWLER entered the market in 1994, which permitted users to search for any word in any webpage, which has become the standard for all major search engines since. WEBCRAWLER was also the first search function widely known by the public.
In the year 2000, GOGGLE entered the search engine market and rose to prominence as the search engine of choice. The company achieved better results for many searches with an innovation called PageRank, which was an iterative algorithm that ranks web pages based on the number and page ranking of other web sites and pages that link to it accordingly. This configuration was based on the premise that good or desirable pages are linked to more than others. GOOGLE also provided a minimalist interface to its search engine. In contrast, many of its competitors embedded a search engine in a web portal. By the year 2000, YAHOO! was providing search services based on INKTOMI's search engine. YAHOO! acquired INKTOMI in 2002, and OVERTURE (which owned ALLTHEWEB and ALTAVISTAO) in 2003. YAHOO! switched to GOOGLE's search engine in 2004, when it launched its own search engine based on the combined technologies of its acquisitions.
MICROSOFT first launched MSN search in the fall of 1998 using search results from INKTOMI. In early 1999, the site began to display listings from LOOKSMART, blended with results from INKTOMI. For a short time in 1999, MSN Search used results from ALTAVISTA instead. In 2004, MICROSOFT began a transition to its own search technology, powered by its own web crawler called MSNBOT. MICROSOFT's rebranded search engine, BING, was launched on Jun. 1, 2009. On Jul. 29, 2009, YAHOO! and MICROSOFT finalized a deal in which YAHOO! search would be powered by MICROSOFT BING technology.
Today there are many search engines available for use, but two search engines that have risen to the top in terms of popularity are MICROSOFT BING and GOOGLE. These search engines return many pages having many results while retaining a familiar format. Currently, the results of the search are returned on the left side of the results page, a local map that is locally positioned to the user's geographic location may display any local merchants offering the searched terms, and advertisements related to the search term listed on the right side of the page. Also, the most relevant matches are provided on the first page of the search results, which is often the only useful page for the user and the subsequent pages are not utilized at all.